Various apparatuses and methods of printing are disclosed in the patent literature and on the internet. Patent publications disclosing apparatuses and methods of printing include: U.S. Pat. No. 6,135,654, Jennel; U.S. Pat. No. 6,699,352 B2, Sawatsky; U.S. Pat. No. 7,210,408 B2, Uptergrove; U.S. Pat. No. 7,467,847 B2, Baxter, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 8,522,989 B2, Uptergrove; U.S. Pat. No. 8,579,402 B2, Uptergrove; U.S. Pat. No. 8,667,895 B2, Gerigk, et al.; and US Patent Application Publication Nos. US 2011/0232514 A1, Putzer, et al.; US 2013/0019566 A1, Schach; US 2014/0285600 A1, Domeier, et al.; and PCT Publication WO 2015/036334, Till. In addition, Xennia Technology has posted a video on You Tube entitled “Digital Outdoor Textile Printing” that shows a printing process on a moving banner material using a print mechanism that moves in an indexing manner. Other types of apparatuses and methods include the apparatus and method disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Pub No. US 2012/0031548 A1, “Apparatus and Method for Applying a Label to a Non-Ruled Surface”, filed in the name of Broad.
A number of current efforts are being directed to printing, particularly inkjet printing, on three-dimensional articles such as bottles and the like. Current printing apparatuses may either be of the single pass or the multi-pass type. Single pass apparatuses have the advantage that they are faster than multi-pass apparatuses. Multi-pass apparatuses can achieve better quality, but since the print heads must pass over the article multiple times in an indexing fashion, they are slower than single pass apparatuses. Unfortunately, with current inkjet technology and current printing apparatuses, the quality of labels that can be formed by printing directly on three-dimensional articles is not as good as that formed on separately printed flat labels. Most of the efforts appear to be directed to attempting to improve the quality of single pass apparatuses. A need exists for improved apparatuses and methods of printing, particularly for printing on three-dimensional articles.